a honky in honky-tonk town

I recently road tripped to a former home- Nashville, TN.  Ginny & I lived in Nashville 6 long, wonderful months before moving to Fayetteville in order for me to start law school  (or I could rewrite that more honestly to say, “because I could not get a job”).  I embarked on this return trip in order to meet some folks and talk about our expanding work with 99 Balloons.  I hope to soon be posting more on our latest thoughts & direction.

I left for Nash-Vegas with only a hope that the trip would be worth it, but came away truly encouraged and further entrenched in a foreboding direction.  There were multiple meetings, typically over great food, but a couple of things in particular bolstered my hope that we’re about to be a small part of a beautiful movement- one that raises the stature of special needs children in countries and places where they are deemed worthless.

Show Hope:: I was able to meet with the great folks at Show Hope.  This organization- best known for providing grants to adoptive families- has managed to build, for lack of better words, a “special care center” named Maria’s Big House of Hope – a namesake in honor of  the daughter that Steven Curtis & Mary Beth Chapman lost.  The reason I balk at the description is that a short blurb is inadequate to describe the work that is going on there.  It is a model of worth and dignity that provides a healing home for special needs orphans.  It is does not take much time of sitting with Mary Beth Chapman until her passion for these kids & this country overtakes the room.  It’s the type of folks and organization that leave you walking out the door proud that such a work is going on in the name of the One you follow.  As an organization, 99 Balloons is looking to plug churches into their work with these great kids, and possibly link them to some of our passionate physical therapists in order to provide plans of therapy for those children who may need it.

Lessons from Levi::  I did not get to meet the family that produced this book, and although I do want to, I don’t need to.  This book alone let’s me know that I love me some Hook family.  Levi is their Down syndrome son that they adopted, and proceeds from the book are funding their next adoption of a Down syndrome girl from Russia.  Yeah, you’re starting to see why I don’t need an introduction.  The book chronicles lessons that they have learned from their son Levi.  I love the paradigm flip in that subtle, life-changing reality:  these children have so much to offer us.

It is stories such as these that I choose to dwell on when the fact of my own inadequacies seem daunting and change seems impossible.  But if I can, for one minute, take my mind off of me then I must admit, I see great things ahead.